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Here's something annoying I found on liberal part of reddit (doesn't matter where, and I don't want to accidentally create drama by linking to it):
Here's the part I found annoying. People have basically never been more atomized in the entire human history and the above text is unironically talking about repairing relationship between a criminal and some made up community. Back when communities were actually tightly knit, criminals were hanged.
I don't even care about restorative justice all that much. I can even see myself supporting it in certain situations. For example, If I happen to be a criminal.
What I absolutely find grating is that this person takes the existence of community for granted when it's for most people no more real than bigfoot. At least conservatives recognize this lack as a problem (tho they don't have any real solutions ) while liberals kinda always assume that communities exist when they mostly don't. They don't even realize that they are talking about phantasm.
It gets even more annoying when they talk about e.g. fandoms as "communities." Are people you met on comic book convention going to build you a house? Help you find a wife? Are they going to watch over your children?
Could we have tightly knit communities without brutal punishments? Should we? I have no idea. But any analysis has to start from the fact that we mostly don't have communities right now.
Back when communities were tight knit, there were informal processes to deal with crime committed by your family or neighbours. Hanging criminals is the point where people are using the power of the state to punish people (usually it starts with outsiders; you wouldn't do this with your in-group). It's a failure of community, and it usually ends up falling out of favour once enforcement comes to the point that your in-group is liable for the same treatment.
In many tight knit communities, justice was dolled out by the church. Since outsiders tended to not be a member, courts provided a great system for punishing them. Even when courts pushed out the church as the main arbitrator in a community, it still relied heavily on church officials' opinions. 30+ years ago, having a priest testify about how great you were was all but a get out of jail free card (where the judge was religious, at least).
We still have tight knit communities these days. They aren't region locked, though.
Anyways, restorative justice was more akin to what your average church would have done in the past (and many continue to do to this day).
Where and when did the local church act as a local community arbiter?
The crowns judges have been in firm control of law for at least 500 years here, with churches not having the role you describe for at minimum 2 centuries if not for longer.
Tight-knit communities are built around something, and that something is almost always the church. In tight-knit communities you do not yield the state's power against your neighbour. Even if courts exist, there's a police force, you'll almost always create bad blood by invoking the state's power in your disputes. And the police, prosecutors, judges, and juries, will all be members of the tight-knit community.
If you believe neighbour wrongs you, you'd go to your priest for help, or other neighbours. Part of being a tight-knit community is that social consequences can be enough to affect a resolution, and one that is moral/just, rather than one that is technically legal.
When you go to the police, you're basically going above the community. If the legal consequences for something are worse than what your community will tolerate, then it's likely the police will try to dissuade you, the prosecutor will decline to bring charges, the judge will give the defendant every benefit of the doubt, etc. Because they are all part of the same community.
But an outsider isn't going to be influenced much by social pressures, and so using the force of the state is seen as acceptable.
If you look at Hasidic Jewish communities, they often have their own police, 'courts', their own schools, etc. They aren't willing to use the state's violence against each other. If they were, they wouldn't be tight-knit communities. Many native reserves are also like this.
I'm sorry but in England this hasn't been the case for a very very long time, I believe for longer than America has been a country.
There is no "local community" for non elite natives.
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